using git-svn with rsync

From time to time I find myself using git-svn with projects using subversion, this is all nice and fine but it takes quite some time to do the ''initial import'' if you are doing it over a remote transport such as ssh+svn.

One trick to speed things up is to use rsync to copy the svn repo locally and then ''git-svn'' it from your harddisk. The idea is originally documented at the allegro wiki

For example a typical sourceforge project will be done like this:

DESTDIR=/your/dest
PROJECTNAME=vde
PROJECTURL=https://$PROJECTNAME.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/$PROJECTNAME
SVN_COPY=$(mktemp -d)
rsync -c -av $PROJECTNAME.svn.sourceforge.net::svn/$PROJECTNAME/'*' $SVN_COPY
mkdir -p $DESTDIR
cd $DESTDIR
git svn init file://$SVN_COPY --rewrite-root=$PROJECTURL --stdlayout
git svn fetch
# ... git svn imports the repo ...
sed -i "s@url =.*@url = $PROJECTURL@" .git/config
rm -rf $SVN_COPY

The important bit is to remember to update the url key after updating otherwise subsequent commits will go to your rsync-ed repo and not the original one!

esaurito.net